Chapter 10: The Curse

IV

I tried to stop Howard but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, hear me. Looking like death had drawn its long cloak about him, he made his way through the bustling servants and uniformed personnel and into the house.

Seeing the catatonic state his face displayed, and the sadness behind his eyes, people parted like birds fleeing a bear. I was two steps behind as he made his way through the entrance, our pyjamas long since tidied away. I followed as he ascended the steps slowly and with the certain rhythm of a metronome.

I resigned myself to silence until such time as he was capable of listening. He continued his blank-faced walk until we were alone in the library. He seemed to want to return to the records but his movement stopped in the centre of the room and he seemed unable to budge.

I was content to wait until he worked through this. I took from this library’s shelf the same book on coastal erosion I had been reading in the public library. I had just come to a section which speculated that all of Dommoc would be underwater in three hundred years when Howard finally spoke:

“I have to see him,” he said in a flat emotionless voice. At first I didn’t think much of it, the words were quiet and barely drew me from my reading. When I looked up, however, I was forced to set aside the book once more; he was no longer frozen, slowly raising his hands to his face and examining them.

Howard burst forth from his in action with a stomp, “Where might in death there be justice,” he began spinning to face me with a wild look in his eye.

“For I hath tried and tried,

Am I left but to surmise; these eyes,

These eyes which look but cannot see,

There is no justice in Death -

Be there death in justice?”

he widened his eyes with his fingers as he approached with slow and certain steps. Madness in his eyes, a madness born of:

“Grief is all that lies in death.

Justice cannot be the net,

Which catches right from wrong,

Good from bad,

Weak from strong.

My heart does not call for justice,

Which my uncle always claimed to seek.

Justice be a weak and feeble thing,

Which cannot fly, it has no wings;”

Howard came within less than an inch of me, staring me in the eye and slapping a hand to his heart.

“Revenge! Revenge.

That is what my heart calls for,

And shall scream for evermore,

Until I have with in my sight,

That cursed curser’s head upon a spike.

Revenge be the eagle to justice’s grouse

It flies above every house,

And sees into the souls of men,

It claws, and bites, and hacks, and rends.

When it strikes the beating heart,

White with blighted sin, and tart,

Still, it stays the bloody organ,

Doth play no more than,

One, not two, not three, not four,

How many shall have to fall before

We have our peace,

our justice,

our vengeance.

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On this day I hath lost a man,

Who knew me before I can,

With any clarity recall,

The faces of our family, all.

Tomorrow be it my fathers turn?

Then upon some twenty year,

My turn shall come,

Shall all be clear?

No, no.

My family be good, be just, be noble!

I thought this might have been because,

Some evil in our past there stood,

But as we have seen today -

With eyes that cannot see -

No justice can there be, in this.

No just cause seeks the death of so many men,

Whose lives have been set upon a scale,

And judged better than them who would:

Drink, and barter, and gamble, and steal,

And claw for every meal.

That heavy heart of blighted sin,

Did not rest within their chest,

But within mine?

Vengeance has swooped down

and taken from me, my pure heart,

Who’s beats did thump in time

with five other nobel men; now six,

Who sought to live and fix,

All they could see -

but never the curse that lay upon thine own breast.

Then to his body we must go,

An with your sight we shall know,

Which foul demon cursed this sacred man,

Who loved as only family can.

Let’s spy upon his bloated corpse,

And follow the thread of cause,

To the man or woman or beast or kind,

Who laid the icy kiss of death upon my line;

And when I should find them, whole and fine?

Death, who justice does not seek,

Death, beneath Revenge’s beak,

Death, who comes, in time, for all,

Death, to this curser, beneath my maul!"

Howard was shouting by the end, waving his fist at the heavens, but as soon as his tirade concluded he lost all energy and slumped to the floor in tears.

☠

After enough tears were shed Howard returned, mostly, to normal. He seemed not to fully remember the last few minutes, but when I helped him to his feet, he did agree that we should see if I could use Curse Detector on his late uncle.

“Shall we go then?” I asked, starting towards the library door. With Life Sense I saw the scullery maid, who had been eavesdropping, scurry away at my words.

“They’ll be guards on his door and they won’t let anyone in until the mortician can make the body presentable.” Howard relayed, rather despondently. I was about to ask how he knew that when I remembered how many times this must have happened before.

“You fight with a maul?” I asked as the thought struck me.

“How do you know that?!” he asked, snapping his head to me - embarrassment evident on his features.

“It was something you said, in that trance.” I explained.

“Ah… well… I do, of course, know how to use a rapier but I was never very good with it.” he said in response. Now that the young noble seemed more responsive I returned to the topic at hand.

“If there are guards outside; how will we get in?” I asked.

“We’ll have to use the escape tunnel, only the family knows about it,” Howard informed.

“There’s an escape tunnel that runs directly into the master bedroom?” I asked, rubbing my chin.

“Yeah, it’s been there since the house was built. But like I said, no one knows about it except the family.” Howard replied.

“And me,” I added.

“And now you,” he agreed.

I asked if he could get a series of odd but magically significant items as I didn’t plan to rely solely on the system granted power. With the pull of a rope and a couple of moment’s wait I had all I needed.

When Footman arrived with the items he seemed to want to stay near to his master but Howard dismissed him. Perhaps he had heard of the boy’s break? If so, this house was full of gossips.

Howard led us out and into the garden’s around back. When there was no one about, he approached a statue that rested near the rear wall of the house. It depicted a wise looking man holding a globe and examining it.

Howard pressed a certain spot on the globe and a mechanism triggered, opening a passage behind the statue. We entered the narrow tunnel and the wall closed behind us, not even leaving a crack. This did however plunge us into darkness.

Howards stumbled on something and started cursing. I saw it was a lamp so I picked it up and lit it with Flame.

Howard thanked me then raised the lamp up to light the way. The passage snaked around in between the walls and along the edge of staircases, behind a wall. I had expected it to be full of cobwebs but it must have been sealed so well that the spiders never managed to get in.

We came to a panel which marked the end of our journey. Howard pressed on part of the stonework and the panel swung silently outwards on oiled hinges.

When I stepped out into the large and well furnished bedroom, I noted the painting on the other side of the panel - as it swung shut. It was a painting of the statue outside.

There in a four-poster bed was a pale man who bore a striking resemblance to Howard, although adult sized and of a slightly broader build. Upon seeing his uncle, lying dead in his bed, Howards skin lightened to match the shade of his deceased kin.

“You don’t have to be here for this.” I offered, worried he might be sick on the scene. I spoke in a quiet tone as I heard the shifting of armoured guards outside the door.

“No, no I’m fine,” he said, taking a seat and looking anything but. I waited a moment to ensure he wouldn’t faint then I began my work.

Curse Detection gave surprising results. I had expected to see a strong connection to the curse with one who had died to it but if anything the curse seemed more distinct about Howard.

I needed to enhance the spell to elucidate matters so I retrieved, from my spatial bag, the stomach of a three toed sloth which Footman had somehow managed to source in a matter of moments.

Using a first circle spell I added clarity to the vision the system’s spell granted. What I learned surprised me. There was indeed a curse on the family, it was placed there 20 years ago. This curse was weak however, incredibly so. It wasn’t born of any great hatred and it certainly couldn’t kill anyone. The most it could achieve was making someone overlook a stone on the road and trip or something on that scale.

I was left baffled, wondering:

How did this man die?